


The Ocean Song

by thesubparpirate



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Blind Draco, Case Fic, Creature Draco Malfoy, Creature Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11822202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesubparpirate/pseuds/thesubparpirate
Summary: Harry is supposed to be taking some time off from being an Auror. But when Antonin Dolohov's body washes up on shore, what else can he do but investigate?





	The Ocean Song

**Author's Note:**

> This story got a bit out of hand and has become something of itself. I began writing with one idea in my head, and reached the end of the tunnel with something much different. I'm not sure if I wholly like how it turned out, but it was good to write. 
> 
> I always appreciate positive comments and constructive criticism, and thank you in advance for taking the time to read my work. It makes me excited when I see that other people are engaging with the things I've written, and I hope you'll enjoy it!

Wandering through the grey dawn, a lone man trudged through the sand. He listened to the wind whistle across the water and the waves crash on the shore. His trek had been long and fraught with danger. His feet were weary. He hadn’t rested his head in so long, constantly alert, constantly afraid the Aurors would finally find him after so many years of running.

The mist was high on the horizon. It gave the coast an ethereal aura, blanketing the farther dunes in a soft fog that erased them from sight. Everything he could see was in tones of sandy white, light brown, or the calming grey that seemed to shift from lilac hues to green to blue as the tides rolled in.

He was so tired, the sand so soft and warm, the waves crashing as rhythmic as breathing. He could feel his pulse slow down as he listened to it. Even the wind seemed more melodious, whistles muting and becoming something different, transforming into a beckoning, beguiling, _come closer, walk no further, rest your weary head_.

Taking deep breaths, he blinked his gritty eyes and stared out to the foggy sea. The waves were gentle, a foot high at the crest, and frothy white foam bubbled as they met the sand. Carefully, he took off his shoes and placed his socks inside. He rolled up his trousers, intending to only take a few steps into the water. It would be so soothing, after such a long time walking. So calming after so much anxiety.

And the song whistling with the wind was so beautiful, so mesmerizing.

_Come closer. Come meet me. I could give you so many things, all your dreams and desires, if only you join me._

He took another step into the water. And another. He felt his feet sink into the muddy sea floor, dragging him down to his ankles. Seaweed clung to his calves, wrapping around his legs, making him itch. The foam leapt up with the cresting waves, sprinkling his trousers. And still the wind whistled.

_Come to me and you’ll never have to run. You’ll never have to hide._

His pant legs became sodden as he removed his foot from the grasping mud and continued further into the ocean. Up to his hips and then to his torso, the water rose, soaking his clothes and weighing them down. But still he continued. 

How nice it would be to stop running, to finally be at peace with that beautiful voice, next to that figure he could only just make out at the edges of the horizon, where water met mist. He couldn’t tell who the silhouette was, but he knew they were beautiful, ethereal, and he loved them powerfully—how could anyone not adore that honey voice and the sweet promises which dripped from it?

 _Come to me_.

He took a deep breath and let the water slip over his head.

Antonin Dolohov was found six hours later washed up on the shore of a coastal town, cold and blue and, most importantly, distinctly dead. 

 

_*_

 

Harry Potter did not like the mist which clung to the seaside village. He did not like the decrepit, abandoned lighthouse which marked the beach like a gravestone, standing proudly on the coast to illustrate to all the decay it had become. Of course death had happened here. It had already lived there for years, just in a different, more insidious manner.

 _One more case. Just one more case_ , he had begged Robards. _I can solve this one, I know it._

Well, he would make good on that promise. Regardless that Robards hadn’t actually given it to him. Officially, he was on leave for mental health reasons. Unofficially, he was still hard at work, and the members of the research team grudgingly tolerated his presence.

“You really do need to take some time off, mate,” Ron had told him with a wary look when Harry had irately ranted to him about Robard’s refusal and obvious lack of common sense. “You haven’t taken a vacation since we started and, well, _I_ think it’s starting to drive you a little barmy.”

Well, Ron may have been right. Harry was a little barking, but then, he figured he had been ever since he _died and came back to life_. He still had nightmares, and in fact was dangerously close to being blacklisted from Dreamless Sleep for the next decade. He was paranoid about the few Death Eaters that had escaped trial, and threw himself into his work, even the cases that didn’t include them. He pursued potential criminals with all the vehemence of an avenging angel—he couldn’t afford to be wrong if someone was capable of hurting the remaining people he held dear. He had a godson to protect. Two godchildren, actually, after Rosie was born just a few years ago. He couldn’t slack off. He couldn’t take breaks.

He couldn’t go on _vacation_ when one of the remaining Death Eaters at large had finally been found. Perish the thought.

Which is how Harry and Teddy ended up at a shabby seaside resort that week, the little boy armed with sunscreen, floaties, and a grin, the Auror with his notepad, his badge, and grim determination.

He was going to be a part of this, damn it. Even if Robards didn’t approve.

 

_*_   

 

“Harry, what’re you doing here?” Auror Chatham asked him in exasperation. She was the Auror closest to the edge of the scene, working to make sure that the wards to keep muggles away stayed in place, and that witches and wizards knew they couldn’t enter while unauthorized. This was a fairly high-profile case, after all—Dolohov had been missing for years.

Harry gestured around vaguely. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, motioning to the overcast sky sending everything in a vague whitish-grey hue, threatening rain at any moment. “I just came here for a jaunt at the beach with my godson.”

Chatham raised an unbelieving eyebrow. “That’s why you’re in jeans and robes, I take it.”

“Well, Teddy’s in his swim trunks.” He waved at the little boy, splashing happily in the cold water many metres away from the sectioned-off crime scene. “But I figure if we’re already here, I might as well help.”

Chatham sighed, pushing her longish hair back behind her ear. The wind would pick it up in a moment and fling it back in her face, but she didn’t seem to mind much. “Your name isn’t on the case list.”

“Yes, but I’m a fresh face. I could add some insight.”

“We don’t need a fresh face. Everyone here has a fresh face. We got this case less than two days ago.”

Harry gave her his best imploring look. “I’ll buy you curry and coconut rice.” Chatham famously loved thai food. Anything with three red peppers next to it on the menu was close to her heart. Her takeaway boxes constantly cluttered the office fridge. 

She took a few deep breaths, looking out to the ocean and avoiding Harry’s face. “If Robards finds out about this, I had nothing to do with it,” she said as Harry cheered. “And I want the next month’s worth of curry.”

He would have kissed her on the cheek if he didn’t think it would get him a body-bind hex facedown in salty water. “You’re the best.”

She snorted. “We’ll figure that out if we can figure out this case.”

“What do we know about the body?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of foul play,” she said, pursing her lips and scowling hard. “He even had his wand on him when he was found. He should have been able to cast a simple bubblehead charm, or even apparate. We had trackers on it, but in a dire situation, I’d bet he would have done it. But instead, he just…drowned.” She shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

“Could someone have cast an Imperius on him?” Harry wondered. “Maybe forced him under?”

She shrugged helplessly. “It’s not like we can make him talk now. We’ve done scanning spells to see if anything was cast on him recently, but nothing is coming up. Just interference from the ocean.”

Harry’s brow wrinkled. “Interference from the ocean?”

She nodded, finally looking at him again. “Any natural, untouched places tend to be hotbeds for wild magic. The Black Forest, the Grand Canyon, and like muggles say, we do know more about the surface of the moon than the depths of the ocean, so it only makes sense really.”

Harry hummed. That would certainly make the whole investigation considerably more difficult. But perhaps…

He was lost in thought when Chatham ordered abruptly, “Now go. I can’t have my supervisor knowing you’re here. Even if you’re Harry Potter, you’re still unauthorized.” She waved him out of bounds. “Go have fun with your godson.”

“I’ll be back,” Harry promised, backpedaling to where Teddy was doing his very best impersonation of a whale, blowhole and all.

She gave him a look. “Of course you will be.”

 

_*_

 

It was the third day at the beach that Teddy got himself in trouble.

Harry would always slather him in sun cream and protection spells before letting him escape into the wild. He made him wear, in addition to his swim trunks, water shoes, a water shirt, goggles on his head, and floaties on his arms. Harry was afraid that using magic to keep the boy above water would be faulty with the large and disruptive presence of wild magic, and couldn’t justify casting a Bubblehead charm on him if he wasn’t completely sure it would work and completely sure he’d be watching him closely the whole time. With his attention divided between the boy and the case, he had to make sure he took all the necessary precautions for Teddy’s safety. The only problem was, all those precautions were starting to get on Teddy’s nerves.

He was eight years old, for Pete's sake! He’d been swimming for three whole years. He knew how to swim. And he knew not to go out very far. He didn’t need swim shoes. Or _floaties_. Those were for babies, and Teddy was certainly not one of those. He had even started reading chapter books, ones with big words in them like _rapscallion_ and _scallywag_ (he was on a bit of a pirate kick, thanks to a recent _Peter Pan_ obsession). 

So that’s why, while Harry was busy interrogating to his Auror friend with the brown hair that kept blowing in her face and the squinty eyes, Teddy slipped away. He ducked down behind a sand dune several metres down the beach and stowed his swim shoes and the floats.

He waded a few feet into the waves, kicking up the mud around him and feeling it squelch between his toes. He giggled as he watched minnows swim by, flashing in the diluted sunlight. He tried to catch some in his outstretched hands, but they were too nimble for his clumsy fingers, and the ripples warded the other schools away.

As clumps of itchy seaweed began to obscure the water and scrape across his skin, Teddy decided to wade in a little deeper. He knew how to swim—he had a mean doggy paddle, and could tread water for the whole three minute deep-end test. Doing that for a little while was well worth not getting seaweed stuck in the netting of his bottoms—he knew from experience how uncomfortable that was, and he wasn’t little enough anymore where it was funny when he just took them off (he had learned that the hard way).

But there was a drop-off he hadn’t expected right after the big clump of seaweed, and Teddy found himself treading water much sooner than he had forseen. _Well_ , he thought, _this is fine. I’ll just keep swimming until I get the end of the clump_.

But the seaweed seemed to be everywhere, brought in with the tide, and the wind was picking up. Soon large waves were crashing over Teddy, dragging him underneath as they hit the surface. As his head bobbed above water, he could see the shore and the dunes where he’d left his floaties and Harry behind, both receding much too rapidly for his liking. For the first time, he began to feel quite afraid.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t keep his head above water for very long. Every time he came up spluttering, he only had a second or two at most before another wave crashed. They were relentless, and Teddy’s arms and legs were starting to ache with the strain of keeping himself close to the surface. His lungs burned and his eyes ached from the sting of so much salt water, his goggles long gone and lost to the ocean.

Just as the world began to spin and little black spots started to form in his already hazy vision, he felt strong arms wrap around his torso, and felt the distinct sensation of rising. Soon, he broke the surface again, coughing up what felt like half the ocean. The water was rushing past him, propelled by rapid, confident strokes, but they weren’t his own—and, streaming tears and snot and salt water, Teddy was in no position to ascertain who exactly was helping him just then.

He felt the shells and sharp stones of the shore scrape into his knees and shins as they slowed. The sting of it helped bring him back to himself, and as he rubbed the last of the water away from his eyes and wheezed in great breaths of sweet, briny air, he blinked in astonishment at the person in front of him, whose head was down in concentration and was maneuvering his shoulders and arms awkwardly across the wet sand, trying to push himself back into the surf as though his legs didn’t work.

 “Wait,” Teddy croaked, using the last of his breath and beginning to cough again. The person looked up, and the little boy gasped in surprise.

He didn’t mean to, not really, and felt bad about it instantly. If Harry had been there and that had been a more normal situation, he was sure he would have been reprimanded. He knew it wasn’t polite to make note of other people’s differences or disabilities—Uncle George laughed about it whenever Teddy brought up his ear, but Uncle George ran a joke shop. He laughed about everything. And he knew Harry didn’t like people pointing out his scar.

Of course he felt terrible, but he just wasn’t prepared to see two milky, silvery-while irises blink up at an unfocused space above his right shoulder. The man’s chest had a bunch of pinkish, puckered scars running diagonally across him, from shoulder to hip. And once Teddy had taken a breath and took in more of the man, he could see that on his bottom half he didn’t have legs, but—

One very large wave broke onto the shore and the merman flipped back into it, his strong tail breaking out of the water for just a moment before disappearing into the waves.

 

_*_

 

Teddy had to do something. You couldn’t just let someone save your life and let them get away with it scot free, after all. Especially not if the person wasn’t really a person.

Teddy wasn’t sure what one gave a merman as a thank-you gift. Fish? But he had enough fish, certainly. Shells? But teddy thought back, and he had glimpsed numerous different, beautiful shells woven into the elaborate braids that met at the nape of the merman’s neck. Certainly not sea glass—what use would he have for it? He was blind, almost definitely, unless merpeople saw without their eyes.

Teddy scoured his brain, so uncharacteristically quiet that night that Harry asked him twice if he was alright, both times to receive the non-answer of a monosyllabic grunt.  His guardian concluded that the little boy had gotten too much sun and sent him to bed early, making sure he drank an extra two glasses of water and took some extra vitamins—the special chewy ones shaped like dinosaurs—before he went to sleep that night.

Teddy didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary, in part because he felt guilty about sneaking away, and in part because he wasn’t sure what to make of the merman—or what Harry would make of him.

He thought about it as he stared at the darkened hotel ceiling that night, missing the luminescent stars Harry and Andy had charmed on his ceiling at home to reflect the night sky above back home. He came to the conclusion that the best gift would have to be one that the merman couldn’t obtain in the sea. A biscuit, maybe—Teddy was partial to biscuits, himself. He was a Jaffa Cake kind of man. Harry always bought Digestives, but they were too crunchy for Teddy’s liking. He thought maybe the merman would like them. He couldn’t have many crunchy things under the sea. And that way, Teddy could keep all the Jaffa Cakes for himself.

Teddy fell asleep that night with a smile on his face, a plan set for the next morning.

 

_*_

 

The next morning, things did not go to plan.

He and Harry ate breakfast together, Teddy eating cereal with marshmallows in it because vacation was the only time Harry and Andy would let him indulge so early in the morning, Harry eating his toast and drinking a mug of coffee larger than his head. Then, when Harry put sun cream and protective spells on him and all the rest, Teddy endured it stoically and didn’t complain.

Harry even let him take the Digestives. Teddy thought he felt bad because Harry spent more time at the crime scene than he did with him this vacation. But Teddy had bigger fish to fry than his godfather—he had a merman to catch.

Once he got to the beach, he realized one large flaw in his plan was that he had forgotten to bring a plate. He figured he could just set the biscuits on the sand, but then that would ruin them. He didn’t want the merman to get the wrong idea if he set the whole package out for him—he still needed to save some for Harry like he’d been asked to—but what if he’d never tasted chocolate before and was overcome with the taste of it? Teddy couldn’t imagine tasting chocolate for the first time, and they certainly didn’t have any at the bottom of the sea. It must have been like discovering heaven.

But, really, he figured he owed him. His life for a package of choco bikkies seemed an even trade.

He fretted for a few moments about how close to the surf to put the package—surely the merman couldn’t go very far out of the water. But if he put the biscuits too close, they would get soggy or float away. Teddy decided to put them right on the line where mud turned to sand and crossed his fingers for small waves. He made sure they were set down securely, and then dashed behind a sand dune, peering eagerly around it for his first real unobstructed view of his rescuer.

Instead of a majestic blind merman waddling onto the surf, he found a tenacious flock of seagulls had begun to attack his precious gift. He ran at the flock screaming and kicking up dirt, waving his hands to make them fly away and almost got pooped on for his efforts. Obviously leaving the biscuits unattended was not going to work.

Teddy decided to sit with them on his lap, the safest place he could think of. He sat, criss-cross-applesauce like his teacher always told him to at the beginning of the day, and gazed out to the shimmering surface of the sea, searching intently for any hint of blonde or any splash of a tail.

His back was straight and his eyes were sharp. But after about fifteen minutes, his shoulders began to ache, and his feet were going numb. He figured one biscuit couldn’t hurt—most of the package was still there. And maybe another.

Or another more.

Eating three wouldn’t hurt anyone, but he would stop now.

Well, how about now.

Or maybe now.

 

_*_

 

Harry found Teddy on the beach two hours later, squinting determinedly into the ocean and sitting cross-legged right where the sea foam met the sand. In his lap, he held the Digestives package between his small hands, a single biscuit wrapped in his grasp.

“What are you doing?” Harry asked, in a much more amused tone than the following, “Did you eat all of my biscuits?” after the noting the distinct lack of any plural biscuits.

 “There’s one left,” Teddy said, pointing out the obvious. He didn’t deign to turn to him—instead, he sat like a little sentry at the water’s edge, ever watchful with his floaties securely placed on his upper arms and all. Harry huffed, looking at the eight-year-old’s distended tummy. Now he wouldn’t have any room left for his real meals. _And_ Harry wouldn’t have any Digestives.

“Thank you for saving me one, at least,” Harry said, hunkering down to sit next to him.

“It’s not for you,” Teddy replied. “It’s for the merman.”

“What merman?” Harry asked, curious and mildly offended.

“I saw him yesterday,” Teddy said evasively. “I’m going to give him a biscuit.”

“Mermen don’t eat biscuits,” Harry pointed out. “And mermen live at the bottom of the ocean, not at the shore.”

“This one does.”

Harry decided to humor him and abandoned his attempt to cajole the cookie away from his godson. Merfolk were drawn to the most magical underwater areas, but they tended to live deep down in the depths of the water, where the pressure was high and the darkness so dense it was a swirling, inky black. More to the point, they avoided people as much as possible. No merman would ever willingly meet Teddy—and if he did, Harry was sure he would frighten the little boy, not make him want to befriend him. He still saw their baleful yellow eyes sometimes in his dreams when he had nightmares about the Triwizard Tournament, and even today they sent shivers down his spine.

 “Alright,” Harry conceded reluctantly. “If the merman comes, you can give him the last Digestive. But if not, I get to eat it. And then tonight after dinner we’re going shopping for more, and you have to figure out a different gift to bribe him with.”

Teddy considered and eventually nodded. It seemed like an alright proposition to him.

 

_*_

 

Food was obviously out of the question. Harry had squirreled his newly purchased package of Digestives away in his room, and Teddy wasn’t giving up his Jaffa Cakes to anyone, no matter how much they helped him. This time, Teddy took a different approach.

All the adults in his life fawned over his drawings, so he figured he had to be a pretty good artist. His stick figures were like no other. He decided to make a portrait of himself and his rescuer.

They were done in Magic Marker—markers which were decidedly _un_ magical, but did the job all the same—and even though the proportions were all off, Teddy figured it was a good enough likeness. It was difficult finding a marker exactly that shade of pale blonde, so he’d selected yellow instead. And he didn’t know how to draw braids just yet, so instead it kind of looked like a tumbleweed on top of the merman’s head, but Teddy hoped he would get the gist. Just in case, Teddy wrote in big letters in the sand, deep enough that the dry sand turned wet and water pooled in the divots, _For the Merman_.

To keep it from flying away, Teddy half buried the picture in the sand and put three big rocks on it. No seagulls came this time, but likewise, no merman did either.

This time, when he and Harry left for dinner, he left the offering where it was. He thought about it all through their meal, and decided that he wanted to take it back in with him, just in case something happened to it. It was irreplaceable, after all, a veritable masterpiece for his second-grade portfolio. Immediately after dinner he raced back to the surf, leaving his godfather to pore over some recent developments and new notes they’d received in the case that Teddy didn’t care about. But when he got back to the beach, the sun low on the horizon and the shadows long, he found that the drawing had been disrupted. It was no longer buried, but did have the rocks holding it in place.

The ink was smeared and bleeding from where it’d gotten wet. Teddy nearly wept in desolation before he realized that the ink stains appeared to be forming in the shapes of finger and handprints. And then he noticed, scooped out of the sand a foot or so away from the waterline, the words _Thank You_. They were right next to a wide line of smoothed, disrupted sand and deep handprints next to it, as though someone had dragged something heavy out of the water without using their legs. Something like a tail.

Teddy walked back to their hotel with a grin on his face and the wet paper crumpled in his small fist, delighted by this new turn of events.

 

_*_

 

The next day, Teddy decided to leave a book on the beach for the merman. He figured, being wet and all, they probably didn’t have many opportunities to read underwater. He thought about his copy of _Peter Pan_ , but disregarded it in case the merman didn’t like the mermaids in the story—they were pretty mean. He considered leaving him _The Chronicles of Narnia_ , but Teddy loved that book too much to part with it. And besides, there were no mermen in Narnia. There were mermen in Neverland. Or, at least, mermaids, which meant mermen had to be there somewhere.

He realized, though, that he had made one crucial mistake. He smacked himself on the forehead when he remembered, just like his favorite cartoon characters. He’d been so caught up in trying to figure out a present, he’d forgotten that the merman was blind!

He must not have even been able to see the drawing. That must have been why there were wet fingerprints all over it—he hadn’t known what it was! Teddy wasn’t even sure how he’d read the little message he left him in the sand. Maybe mermen had some sort of sea magic that helped them on the beaches, even if they couldn’t see.

Changing his course, Teddy sprinted back to the hotel room and got the magicked boombox they had. It played all Harry’s favorite songs, and some of Teddy’s, too, making is a strange mish-mash of grungy alternative rock and high-pop children’s songs. Teddy, already out of breath, carried it with him back to the beach, leaving the useless books on the couch in his room.

He planted himself on the beach and turned the volume up to the highest setting. This time he would not fail. He absolutely would make friends with the merman, even if he had to sit out there _all day_.

 

_*_

 

Teddy saw him at about midday, the sun high in the sky on a rare bright afternoon here. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and Teddy had to wear sunglasses and a hat to keep from getting a headache.

There was a large ripple over near an outcropping of boulders to his left, and then, when Teddy squinted in the shimmering sunlight, he could see a long, pale shape leaning against one of them. He turned the dial up even more on the boombox, now unable to even hear the sounds of the ocean, so loud the music was. He watched the merman turn his head as a dog would, angling one ear, then the other towards the source of the racket.

Unsure of what to do, Teddy brought the boombox with him to where the line of boulders began. “Hello,” he called. “I see you, over there!”

Tentatively, the merman raised a hand off the rock he was clinging to, and waved.

“Yes!” Teddy exclaimed, so excited that he couldn’t contain himself from hopping from foot to foot. “Hello! I’m Teddy, what’s your name?”

The merman didn’t answer. It was too far away for Teddy to discern his expression, so he decided to try to climb across some of the rocks and get a closer look. However, when he set down the boombox to try, he watched in dismay as the merman flipped back into the ocean and disappeared from sight once more.

Well, Teddy was nothing if not persistent. They still had three days here before the week was up. He would just have to keep coming.

The merman couldn’t ignore him forever.

 

_*_

 

The next morning, Teddy ran out of the hotel with spring in his step and a whistle on his lips. He would meet the merman today. He knew it. He had a good feeling.

Upon reaching his destination, he realized his feeling had been spot on.

But there was nothing good about it.

 

_*_

 

Harry was just about to leave for the crime scene, _again_ , before he saw Teddy return.

The little boy came to sprinting back to the hotel room faster than Harry had ever seen him run, screaming his head off as though he’d seen a ghost scarier than the Bloody Baron.

“Harry!” he yelled, stomping up from the beach to their room.  _“Harry!”_ The boy called again, flying across the sand and grass with bare feet, his swim shorts dripping wet and his hair—hot pink, today, and a more alarming shade than it had been when he left just minutes before—stuck out at all sorts of odd angles as he flung the screen door open.

“What?” Harry asked, setting his coffee down in confusion. “I was just finishing breakfast, do you want—“

“Come on!” Teddy said, grabbing his wrist and tugging his hand, making him drop his toast. “It’s an emergency!”

Harry would have been perturbed by the perfectly good toast now lying on the floor had he not been focused on the look on his godson’s bloodless face. Teddy was a fairly mild kid, and with a good temperament, too. He never really flew off the handle unless it was something truly important to him.

“He’s bleeding!” Teddy screamed, Harry still not moving fast enough for his liking. “Come _on!_ ”

Well, that got Harry up and moving like an electric shock. “Who? Where?” he asked, starting to jog with the boy, whose hair was shifting between hot pink, purple, and teal in anxiety. Teddy sprinted off, surprisingly swift for someone still much shorter than Harry, and Harry took off after him, clutching his wand.

“Here!” Teddy said, running over the crest of a sand dune. “He’s still here! Oh, geez…”

Harry hurried after him, thankful that Auror physical training had such high standards. And then he stopped short, nearly falling flat on his arse upon seeing what had driven Teddy to such a state.

“Merlin,” he breathed, and immediately began firing off disillusionment and scanning spells as he approached the victim. This beach wasn’t a magical space—both muggles and magic folk frequented it fairly often, despite the strange disappearances that plagued the place for centuries. The Auror team had found that Dolohov was just the most recent in a string of unfortunate and historical deaths, but that still didn’t get them any closer to figuring out _how_ he’d died, or why.

Harry figured some very confused individuals would start asking a lot of unwanted questions if they found a half-dead siren lying outside their hotel room.

 

_*_

 

The siren was lying on his stomach when Harry got to him, face down in the sand, his forehead resting on the crook of his elbow. He was so still, Harry feared he was dead. He had no time to marvel that Teddy’s made-up friend was actually _real_ , albeit a slightly different creature than he’d originally thought.

The siren’s breathing was slow and shallow, and when Harry cast a scanning spell on him, he found that his heartbeat was disconcertingly faint.

He ordered Teddy to go back to the room and clear off the kitchen table. He didn’t need to look at the poor creature any more than he already had, and besides, Harry would need that space soon. Auror training had given him enough skills to be able to give the immediate medical support the creature obviously needed, though he would certainly have to call someone else in later on, once the siren was out of mortal peril.

The muggle boat had done one hell of a number on him.  Unfortunately, much like manatees, sirens were very slow-moving in the water. They used their song to distract those who meant them harm and caught their food by setting traps or digging up shellfish—when they had no human men to lure into their waters, that was. Sirens were dangerous magical creatures, and dangerous hunters. Harry was fervently glad that Teddy hadn’t managed to find the siren before this, or he may very well have become dinner.

Although their song was alluring, it had no effect on muggle watercraft, and the grating sound of the propellers and the rudders drowned out the siren song when the boats moved at full speed. Obviously this poor creature had fallen victim to one, with much of the tail and some of the back badly slashed and bruised.

Harry didn’t want to risk carrying the siren and risking it further injury, so he cast a levitation charm instead. He was surprised to note that this siren’s chest was a flat plane, and though his face was obscured by disheveled masses of braids tangled with salty sea water and tinged an awful red, Harry was sure he’d see a more masculine jaw line and nose.  He’d thought, apparently incorrectly, that all sirens most closely resembled human women, not human men.

He would have to ask Hermione about it later. And once he woke up, Harry would have to ask the siren some questions of his own, but of course, that wouldn’t be for a while. For now Harry had more pressing matters—such as keeping him alive.

 

_*_

 

Harry asked Teddy to floo Luna and tell her what had happened as he worked. Though a bit outlandish and rather alarmingly dreamy in many instances, Luna had studied hard and become a very talented veterinarian for magical creatures, apprenticing under Hagrid at first, and then under one of Newt Scamander’s granddaughters after that. She responded immediately and was at Harry’s house in under ten minutes, clothed in functional overalls and a sturdy work shirt, wearing a determined no-nonesense expression that he could never quite get used to seeing on her small, heart-shaped face.

Once she was there Harry found that he was fairly outmatched. He was at a loss of what to do, so while Luna cast scanning spell after scanning spell and made their patient’s body light up with sparks of blue, orange, and white, he transfigured whatever surgical instruments Luna needed and summoned any needles and thread necessary. They spent an excruciating amount of time on a gash on the small of the siren’s back, just off to the side enough that the propeller had evaded his spine, which was a relief. Despite the fact that his tail bore the brunt of the cuts, his back was the one Luna was most concerned about—sirens often took after manatees, for their bottom sections at least, and their skin was much thicker than that of a human. But the siren’s back more closely resembled that of a man and was, therefore, more delicate. Harry wasn’t sure how long they pored over it, only that Luna had to send him out for more salves from Diagon before their work was done, and he strained his eyes just watching her painstakingly sew the skin back together. 

As the afternoon progressed into evening Harry found himself doing laundry and cleaning bandages more than actually interacting with the siren, doing the grunt work for a much more adept Luna. Teddy had been pushed back into his room entirely, the adults wary that having a little boy see such carnage surely wasn’t good for his development.

As Harry passed his door in the hallway, he heard Teddy’s voice call out to him and turned.

“Is he going to be alright?” Teddy asked him, his eyes wide. For an eight-year-old, Harry had to admit that Teddy was very brave, though right now he was obviously rattled.

Harry drew him into a hug and walked them back into Teddy’s room, shutting the door behind him and closing out the shuffles and movements in the kitchen that sounded far too loud in the focused silence. “He’ll be fine,” Harry assured him, wishing he felt so confident. “Luna is the best of the best—she knows more than anyone. He’s getting the best treatment he can right now. All we have to do is wait.”

“It’s my fault,” Teddy breathed, his small form shaking. He brought his hands around himself to hug his torso. “He wouldn’t have been there if not for me.”

Harry’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?” Harry asked him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Teddy seemed to be barely containing tears. “A few days ago, when I went to swim by myself—I know you told me not to swim out past my shoulders, but I can swim well, Dad, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go out a little farther. But then the waves picked up and the undertow got me and I…” Harry knew things were bad when Teddy started calling him “Dad”. He only did that when he was seriously upset. Looking at him now, this was definitely one of those times.

Teddy had begun to breathe very swiftly and making some alarming wheezing noises, so Harry pulled him into a tight hug, trying to process what he was telling him. _Merlin,_ he’d never let Teddy go near the ocean again. He thought that since he’d been battling trolls and a weird parasitic version of Voldemort on the back of Quirrel’s head at age eleven, an eight-year-old should be capable of going for a swim by himself—but then, it was a miracle Harry had ever survived, so maybe he shouldn’t have been using himself as a yardstick for normalcy.

“What happened?” he asked, trying to keep himself calm, though some of his intensity tainted his voice and made it go lower.

“Well, I—I thought I was a goner. And then I woke up and—and the siren—the one on the table—he was swimming me to shore. I only saw him for a second or two before a big wave came up and dragged him back into the ocean, so I didn’t have time to thank him. I’ve been leaving him presents.” Teddy looked absolutely miserable, unable to look Harry in the face.

“Well, how do you know it was this one in particular?” Harry asked, rubbing his back and trying to keep him from crying. He hated it when Teddy cried. He never had any idea what to do, and though Andy and Molly guided him through much of parenting, he still often felt awkward and ham-fisted in his approach to childcare.

“I saw him a few times, but he never came to talk to me,” Teddy said, looking like he wanted the floor to rise up and eat him. “I thought if I left him enough presents, he would come and talk to me.”

“Ah,” Harry said, feeling as though he was a bit in a pickle here. “Well, it’s still not your fault. It’s not like you were the one driving the boat. If anything, you saved his life, because you came and got me—so now the two of you are even.”

“I guess…” Teddy replied, sounding dubious and looking wholly unconvinced.

“He’ll be alright, you’ll see,” Harry said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Everything will be just fine.”

 

_*_

 

Luna and Harry finally finished after hours of intense care. Both of them were pretty wiped out afterwards.

“It’s such a shame,” Luna said sadly over a cold, half-empty mug of tea. “People really can be cruel, muggles and wizards alike.”

Harry nodded silently, unable to respond much. The images of blood and rendered flesh reminded him too much of the graphic sights which still too often plagued his nightmares.

“Don’t hound him with questions when he wakes,” Luna reminded him. “I know you probably want answers for your case, but he’s still injured, and he’ll feel very frightened and vulnerable out of water. He doesn’t have legs to walk with, and for sirens, like many sea creatures of magic, the ocean is the source of their power. I’m sure he’ll feel quite bereft without it—as you or I might feel without a wand.”

“I wasn’t going to jump down his throat,” Harry muttered, a little insulted.

“You can be quite intense, though,” Luna replied gently. “Especially concerning who he is.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, befuddled. “I’ve only just met him—and not really even that.”

Luna gave him a befuddled look. “You didn’t watch my diagnostic spells?”

“I couldn’t make sense of any of them,” Harry replied honestly, a little sheepish.

“Ah. His magical signature is similar to that of someone we used to know, though for obvious reasons it has changed,” Luna explained. “I suppose you should get a good look at his face yourself, though.” She got up and poured out her cold tea, taking her time.

After a moment, she said, “I’ll put the kettle on. You may want some tea.” Obviously, it was time for Harry to figure out just who this was.

Harry got up, even more confused than ever, and cautiously went to see what the fuss was about.

 

_*_

 

Harry noticed that the siren was breathing deeply when he got closer to him in the kitchen. There were bandages all over his back and tail where the propeller had hit him, and salves on the bruises where he and the boat had collided. His hair was still tangled in an odd shape around his head, his face tucked into a pillow so he wouldn’t get a bad crick in his neck as he rested.

Harry pushed back the silvery blonde hair, stiff from the salt water and unpleasantly crunchy with sand and dried blood. They should really do something about that before the night was up, but they’d been so immersed in healing, a proper shampooing hadn’t exactly been their top priority. And besides, Harry wasn’t sure how long it would take to undo all the elaborate braids with seaweed, shells and pearls weaved into them, but he was sure it wouldn’t be a short process, especially without magic—Luna had all sorts of monitoring spells set up, and Harry figured that the less magic done around this particular patient just now, the better.

Carefully pushing the stiff locks behind his ear, Harry peered at the face Luna thought he should have known. His skin was alabaster pale, but that was to be expected—he lived in the ocean and came out mostly at night, of course he wouldn’t be getting any tans anytime soon. But he did look familiar. The sharp cheekbones and pointed nose and chin—

But he’d been missing for ages.

“It’s not,” Harry said incredulously, looking at Luna standing silently in the doorway for a confirmation he didn’t receive. “It can’t be.”

Luna shrugged, her back to the two of them as she made tea. Her hair was long and blonde, yet so much darker than Draco’s, and it swished with her movements bouncy and clean. “And yet, it is. Miraculous, isn’t it?”

Harry stared at him for a long while more, watching his eyes flutter in sleep, honey-blonde eyelashes dusting his cheeks. “But how?”

Luna wrapped his hands around a warm mug of tea that she pressed to him and replied softly, “You’ll have to ask him that when he comes to, won’t you?”

Harry hummed distractedly, taking a sip automatically rather than because he wanted to. His eyes never left that face, the one that would have looked peaceful if not for the troubled line between his brows and the tightness in his jaw.

“I’m going to go to bed,” Luna told him quietly, dimming a few of the brighter lights around them, the old wood floor creaking beneath her steps. “If you’re going to sleep, just wake me and I’ll move onto the couch to be closer to him, just in case.”

Harry stayed a long time after she left, sitting in the dim light on a hard kitchen char next to Draco in silence, just listening to his breathing and letting his eyes roam over him.

Eventually, Harry got up. He returned moments later with a bucket of water, a sponge, a comb and a towel.

It disturbed him to look at Draco in such violent disarray. It left him with a strange pit in his stomach and a hard lump in his throat to see the blood tinting his hair. It reminded him of another damp, dingy place, when Malfoy’s blood stained the tiles. And he was sure Draco himself would be appalled at his current state, if he was aware enough to comment on it.

And so, slowly, Harry began the task of cleaning and combing out Draco’s hair. As he did so, his hands were occupied with the difficult process of disentangling the stiff locks, and Harry’s mind began to wander to their past.

It was fairly widely known—at least by the members of the Order—that Draco had turned the tides of the war by giving Harry his wand, and that his mother had indisputably saved Harry’s life. Though Harry and Hermione and even Luna testified for him at the trials, his involvement in this capacity was kept largely obscured from the general public. But Harry was sure that that hadn’t kept him safe, especially after so much time spent as an Auror, so many hours chasing criminals and Death Eaters. If he was honest with himself, he knew it was an unhealthy obsession. But working to the point of exhaustion meant he wouldn’t have to deal with the nightmares. And he felt like he was doing something productive. He felt like he was doing something useful. And, of course, if he ever wanted to have a life, he wanted to make absolutely sure he wouldn’t spend it looking over his shoulder every second he was out somewhere. The fact that he already did this very often meant less to him than it probably should have.

After all, once he’d gotten what he wanted, what else is there to do but find something else to chase? His whole life had been one linear quest. And though it was undoubtedly better now that the war was over, now that Voldemort was dead and the Dursleys were out of his life, he didn’t know how to live without that driving goal. May as well continue that, then—better to be focused than aimless. Better to be determined than uncertain. Better to have purpose than to just…well…exist. All Harry’s life, he’d been told what to want.

The Dursleys. Dumbledore. The prophecy.

And afterwards, with society. The Hogwarts diploma. The steady, noble career. The war medals and honorific titles and all the rest.

He’d gotten them all. All the things they’d wanted. All the things he thought he wanted, but had he, really?

Everyone had told him what to want and he thought he’d hated it. But now that nobody was telling him anything anymore, that was all he wanted.

Just someone to tell him what to want.

So he’d thrown himself into his work. Harry may have been lonely, but lonely was better than complacent. Lonely was better than dead. He knew this type of thinking was unhealthy, but he didn’t know how to break it. He didn’t know if he could. After all, even before Hogwarts, even before Voldemort, he’d learned to meet suspicion and anger as near constant companions at the Dursley’s.

Combing Draco’s hair was strangely soothing after he’d gotten all the knots and seaweed and shells out of it. He wasn’t sure which of the decorations were purposeful and which had gotten tangled in the fray, so he lined them all up neatly on his coffee table, not wanting to make Draco’s awakening any more traumatic than it had to be in case any of the objects had some sort of significance Harry could not grasp. How had Draco even done this? Had he transfigured himself? But witches and wizards couldn’t transfigure themselves, not into magical creatures. Though Draco was related to two powerful Metamorphmagi, both Tonks and Teddy. Perhaps he was one too? But that wouldn’t make sense, he would have displayed his abilities long before now.

Harry sighed and rubbed his gritty eyes. Circling around the conundrum endlessly would do him no good, especially not in his overtired state. He ran his fingers through Draco’s long fine hair, damp and silky now that the salt and grit had been gently washed from it. He knew the git would have made a scene had he been awake, but he wasn’t, and Harry had just done a great deal to keep him alive. He could clean out his hair for a bit longer than necessary.

Taking a deep breath, Harry gathered Draco’s hair and swept it neatly aside so that it wouldn’t catch onto any of his bandages before standing. He really did need to get some rest, but he didn’t want to wake Luna—she had been so good about coming over and helping, so instead, he took the couch. For some reason, he felt oddly protective of the man on the kitchen table. It may have had something to do with Teddy’s tears and the way he sat sentry at the water’s edge, waiting with a single biscuit to welcome his savior to the world of the walking. It reminded Harry of what he had almost lost.

Like it or not, when Draco woke up, Harry would be there.

 

_*_

 

Harry could not, in fact, sleep. Instead, he stared at the wall for approximately four hours, while positioning his body in increasingly outlandish position in a futile attempt to get comfortable, his thoughts tumbling between frustration about not falling asleep, worry about Draco’s state, frustration about Draco, and frustration about not falling asleep. He listened to the sound of the waves crashing outside, and the similar sound of Draco’s gentle breathing in the next room over.

He was still laying there as the sun began to shine through the curtains. Harry groaned and pressed a pillow to his face. And realized a different, soft groan had sounded from the open doorway.

“Draco?” he asked, walking quickly through the doorway. He could see the siren’s shoulders stiffly moving in an attempt to prop himself up. “No, don’t do that. Are you in pain?”

“Where am I?” Draco croaked, dazed and confused. He was thrown off-kilter by his lack of vision—in the ocean, he usually relied on his ears for sight, using sonar as dolphins did and navigating through clicks and whistles. But without the water his pitch was all wrong and he couldn’t see a thing.

Whatever platform he was on, it didn’t feel like rock, but it was too smooth to be anything else. And he couldn’t hear the ocean, which meant not only was he above water, but he was also not anywhere near it. The very thought made him shudder—he didn’t like being so immensely helpless. With both his vision and the sea gone, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t see, and he could hardly do magic: he felt as vulnerable as a crab without its shell.  

And that voice—it was deep, masculine, and sounded familiar enough to prick the edges of his memory. Of course, the last time he’d heard a voice from aboveground that was familiar, it had been after recently turning eighteen and most of his friends and loved ones still had their adolescent voices, replete with cracking vowels and cleared throats.

“You’re in my hotel room. You got hit by a muggle boat. We had to take you away from the sea before anyone saw you.” The sentences were curt and exact, delivering as much information as possible with the least amount of energy. Draco heard footsteps coming closer to him, and then a sharp inhale. He craned his neck and peered upwards with his useless eyes—old habits died hard, even ones he hadn’t employed in years.

Harry couldn’t believe it. He really was Draco Malfoy, though of course, no longer the teenager he’d known. He’d grown into his face, and what used to come together as awkwardly sharp planes had become elegant lines and finely pointed features. But his eyes were really what threw Harry off.

Instead of the grey they used to be, a washed-out whitish-blue was in its place. His gaze hovered somewhere around Harry’s chest, unfocused and unseeing.

“I suppose I should thank you,” Draco began with his voice hoarse from a dry throat and disuse, shifting uncomfortably to move onto his elbows and wincing as the skin on his back stretched, taking shallow breaths as his ribs protested. Harry watched as his eyes screwed shut for a moment and his brow furrowed, but Draco stayed stubbornly in the same position until the pain receded. “But I’m afraid I don’t know who you are. Though, for some reason, you seem to know my name.” He didn’t sound like Lestrange or Greyback—his voice was much too kind for that, and much too sane. But one could never tell, though at this point, Draco was hoped fervently he wasn’t. He was at the mercy of whoever had caught him—if he was lucky, he’d get an attractive young fisherman instead of a crazy old werewolf. Perhaps it could be like one of those silly muggle love stories. He might even be able to save him from being devoured by his sisters at the end, if the ocean helped him wipe his memory.

“You saved my godson, Teddy,” Harry said. “I’m just returning the favor.” He didn’t elaborate on who he was. He worried knowing his identity would made Draco agitated, and even with magical healing properties he was still extremely weak.

Draco flipped his tail, an automatic response to irritation, and groaned aloud. His pained exhale whistled through gritted teeth, which Harry noted were small and pointed, quite like a dolphin’s.

“Try not to move,” Harry advised belatedly.

“Yes, got that,” Draco ground out, annoyance clear in his tone. “Thanks.”

“We think the boat struck your side and then ran over your tail,” Harry said, realizing that even with sight Draco would have difficulty categorizing his injuries by himself. “The propeller caught a good bit of you, but we’ve patched you up where we can. It broke a rib—we managed to heal that, but it’s still deeply bruised. You have a lot of contusions around your back, backside, and I suppose where your thighs would be.”

“It all feels rather numb,” Draco said lowly, concern written on his features.

“Yes, that’s normal,” Harry replied quickly, not wanting him to worry overmuch. “Luna put a salve on them to take much of the pain and swelling away, it’s composed of numbing agents as well. There’s no nerve damage that we could see, though now that we’re awake she can do some more scans with your consent.”

There was a long pause. Draco’s expression was inscrutable. “…Luna?” he asked eventually.

“Yeah, I—I called her in once I’d gotten you here.”

Draco looked thoughtful and a little disturbed. “Are you Longbottom?” he asked abruptly. “I wouldn’t have bet my last pair of legs that _you’d_ ever help me. Though I never thought you’d have the stones to kill that terrible demon snake, either,” Draco said, shuddering. “I suppose I’m in your debt, then. That’s rather embarrassing. At least you became good looking in seventh year.”

“I’m not Neville,” Harry managed. Like this, Draco seemed actually…human. Though of course, he was less human than ever. He’d never imagined him capable of actually sounding like he _admired_ Neville, whose life he made a living hell for first and second year.

“Well, that makes this an easy guessing game, unless Luna has gotten herself a friend outside of Hogwarts,” Draco said, a deep scowl marring his features. “Potter, _why_ does it always have to be _you_?” His voice was soft when he said it, but low with intensity. “I’d rather it be Longbottom. Honestly.”

“I don’t know, I suppose I’m just lucky like that,” Harry said, scratching his head and shrugging, which, of course, Draco couldn’t see. “I was looking for Death Eaters, and found you instead.”

Draco raised a scathing eyebrow—its acidity only slightly lessened by his unfocused gaze—and lazily flipped his left arm over, displaying a faded but still starkly present Dark Mark on his pale skin. Seeing the thin, criss-crossing scars overlapping it made him wince. “Voila,” he drawled. “You found one. Are you going to kill me, now that you’ve spent all that time saving me?”

“No,” Harry responded immediately, offended. “Of course not. You just got hit by a boat.”

“Oh, but if I hadn’t,” Draco argued, eyes wide with fake innocence and voice biting with sarcasm, “then I’d be fair game.”

“You saved _Teddy_ ,” Harry protested. “Jesus, Malfoy. You’ve been missing for ages.”

“And now you’ve found me,” he mocked, placing his chin on his palm as though terribly bored with the whole exchange. “Are you going to take me into custody, Auror Potter? Handcuff me, perhaps, so I have no way of moving whatsoever? I’m an easy target now, without my ocean!” His exclamation was punctuated by a hard angry _slap_ of his tail, proceeded immediately by furious, pained snarl.

“I’m not,” Harry said, his voice strained but firm, his hands raised with his palms towards Draco as if that would stop him from hurting himself further. “Trust me, I don’t like this.”

Draco’s response after a long pause took a path that surprised Harry. “You never gave me my wand back,” Draco said, his voice thick with emotion, and turned his face down so his hair obscured his expression. The comparison—that he had felt as vulnerable and useless without his wand as a fish (siren) out of water was not unnoticed by Harry.

“I’m sorry,” Harry apologized. “After the war…there were too many things going on at once. I still have it, in a cupboard at my house.”

Draco grunted, his shoulders up near his ears, his expression mutinous.

Biting his lip, Harry asked instead, “How did this happen?” Motioning to his tail, which he belatedly realized was lost on the siren.

Draco sighed and replied on the tired exhale, “That’s none of your business.”

Harry scrutinized him, undeterred. “Did someone curse you?”

Draco barked a bitter laugh. “Wouldn’t that be rich.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “No, scarhead, this is all of my own machinations.”

Harry furrowed his brow. “I still don’t understand.”

Draco snorted. “Of course not, Potter,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he changed the subject. “Do you have a blanket?” he asked. “Since you insist on helping me, I’m quite cold.” He was, at that—Harry could see gooseflesh pebbling the skin on his arms. Harry got him one of the quilts from the couch, resigning himself to not knowing what had happened to his acerbic charge, and rolled it on top of Draco. The siren gathered his pillow in his arms and held it closer in.

“Sleeping on my stomach for so long will be murder on my back,” Draco admonished sleepily to no one in particular.

“So was the boat,” Harry replied dryly. After a few minutes of rummaging around in the kitchen to ind pans and bread and eggs, he said, “I’m making breakfast, would you like anything?”

With no response, he turned to ask again, but found that Draco had fallen quickly back to sleep - or wanted to appear as though he'd done so. The blanket rose minutely with his every seemingly untroubled breath.

Harry hummed. He decided he would make him breakfast anyway. After all, it wasn’t like Draco was going anywhere.

 

_*_

 

Teddy was ecstatic to find Draco awake later that morning, though he hid in the other room for quite a while, trying to figure out what he would say and how he would act, going over potential conversations in his head.

Eventually, he just decided to start off simple. “Hi,” he said shyly, advancing on the kitchen table where Draco was still laying propped up by one elbow, eating with his free hand in a much more graceful manner than Harry figured he’d ever be able to do in the same position.

Draco looked up, swallowing his small bite and arching his neck gracefully upwards to face him. Teddy met his sightless eyes. Shivering a little, it seemed as though Draco could really see him, though he knew that must be impossible. “Hello,” the siren said slowly, his accent closer to that which Andy had than anyone else Teddy had ever spent time with.

“Are you a merman? Like from the Mermaid Lagoon?” was the first thing that came out of his mouth, all in a rush.

Draco’s mouth twitched. “I’m not sure where that is,” Draco said. “And I’m not a merman, thankfully—I don’t have a very high opinion of merfolk,” he confided in the little boy.

“Why not?”

“I think they’re rude,” Draco replied loftily, and Harry had to pretend to cough to keep himself from snorting. Draco Malfoy was the epitome of bad manners, or at least, he had been. “I’m a siren.”

“What’s the difference?” Teddy inched a little closer, shuffling over bit by bit, trying to contain his curiosity.

“Merfolk have scales and gills and can live deep underwater,” Draco explained patiently. “They’re closer to fish than people. Sirens are mammals, like manatees, so we have to stay close to the surface to breathe air.”

“That’s why you found me,” Teddy concluded. Draco nodded.

The little boy ran a hand through his hair, which was almost as messy as Harry’s despite everyone’s best efforts. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said tentatively. “I never got a chance to tell you that before.”

A funny little smile turned Draco’s lips up. “Thank you for saving mine,” he said, referring to his current predicament. “The ocean has healing abilities, but apparently is no match for a muggle speedboat.”

“Why didn’t you swim away?” Teddy blurted. “Were you trying to help someone else, too?”

Draco scoffed softly, self-deprecatingly. Harry could hear it from the room over, where he was reading the same line in the newspaper for the umpteenth time and trying very hard to pretend this was all normal. “That whole saving your life business has left you with unrealistic expectations of my selflessness. I wasn’t _trying_ to do anything—I was just slow, and the boat was fast.”

Teddy fiddled with a string on his nightshirt. “We learned in school that sirens are usually out at night,” he admitted, like it was something worth an admission. “If I hadn’t been leaving you presents, you wouldn’t have been there.”

Draco _tsk_ d. “Not true,” he corrected gently. “I quite like the sunlight, though I can’t see it. I go up every once in a while when it’s daytime just to feel the warmth of it. I could have gotten hit any of those times, too.”

“Did your eyes happen in an accident too? And your chest?” Teddy asked bluntly, and Harry winced.

Draco took it well, though, addressing Teddy with candor and poise he’d never shown at Hogwarts. “I went to the sirens after the war—surely you know of the war?” Teddy nodded silently, a pause which Draco took in stride and continued through. "Yes. Well, I went to them, thinking they could help me with something. They don’t like men much, but they thought I was different, so they didn’t kill me as they usually do. The first one to see me, my friend Bellona, brought me to her sisters and they offered me a deal.” He waved his hand in front of his milky eyes. “My sight for a new life. Creatures of the sea don’t use their eyes much anyway, underwater. It was no big loss to me. I mostly use sonar.” Harry noticed that Draco neglected to elaborate about the origins of his other scars.

Teddy, however, did not, too enraptured in the other explanation. “So you can see now?”

Draco pouted. Harry could hear it even in his voice. “Unfortunately not. My frequency isn’t pitched to be above ground. I’m sure I could figure it out, though, with some trial and error.”

“That’s so cool though! You’re like Daredevil. Or Aquaman.” Teddy loved comics. Harry had to smile at the excitement in his voice. “Definitely Aquaman.”

“I…thank you?” Draco replied uncertainly. “I’m not sure I understand the creatures you’re referencing.”

That was all Teddy needed to launch into a spiel about all of his favorite comic book characters and all of their character arcs. After about fifteen minutes Harry walked through the kitchen, intending on waking up Luna in the guest bedroom, who normally slept quite late. Draco shot a pleading look in his direction, one that he didn’t miss, and Harry had to stifle his laughter.

“Teddy,” he said as he walked. “We’re going to have to steal Draco’s attention for just a bit while Luna does some more examinations to make sure he’s healing properly.”

Teddy huffed, but complied. “Can I talk to you later?” he asked Draco, giving him an imploring look that he couldn’t see, but one that matched his tone.

Despite his intense lack of interest in muggle comics, Draco gave him a little smile. “Sure, Teddy.”

As Luna entered the room, the little boy left, beaming.

 

_*_

 

Luna announced that Draco had to stay with them one more night, if only to make sure the strain of swimming wouldn’t force open his healing wounds. Draco was unhappy, but didn’t throw as much of a hissy fit as Harry expected. Mostly, he thought he was frustrated about not being able to move, as Harry most certainly would be.

Luna had, though, cleared him to be able to _be_ moved from the kitchen table since he had no legs to make use of, which was a distinct improvement.

“Would you prefer a bed?” Harry asked him, knowing the table must have been uncomfortable. Luna had already told him that she needed to leave—now that Draco was out of immediate danger and on the path to a healthy recovery, she needed to go back to her menagerie of rescued magical creatures and continue healing them. She had reluctantly taken the floo shortly after, though she'd requested Harry to keep her updated.

“Yes,” he said immediately. How long had it been since he had slept in a real bed? Far too long. Even if this one was plebian cotton instead of the silk he’d been used to at the Manor, it would do over a hard kitchen table.

“Alright,” Harry replied, fingering his wand. “You don’t mind if I use magic on you, do you?”

“Well, I’m certainly not letting you throw me over your shoulder,” Draco quipped.

Harry huffed a laugh. “Alright, then.”

Draco was stiff as a board as Harry cast the levitation spells, his hands clutched around the pillow brought close into his chest as though that would protect him. “I won’t drop you,” Harry assured him.

“Yes, well, I have fins, not wings,” Draco replied tightly. “It’s not a critique of your casting. I’m not made for flight.”

“You were pretty good on a broom, if I recall.”

Draco grinned proudly, tossing his head. It was much more dramatic a gesture with his long hair. “I was,” he crowned unabashedly.

“Too bad I was better.”

Draco scoffed incredulously. “You were _not_ , you were just lucky,” he protested.

“I’d challenge you to a rematch, but as you said—you’re not quite built for flight anymore.”

“If you cast a proper Bubblehead charm—or even muck up a transfiguration like Krum—we can have a rematch just fine,” Draco grumbled, sighing happily as he gently hit the mattress and the tension left his back and shoulders, shifting slightly to the right to avoid putting much pressure on his injured side.

“Could I borrow a jumper?” Draco asked.

Harry looked at him funnily. “Why?”

“Because although sirens don’t wear much, humans do,” Draco replied, as though it was obvious. “And I don’t like being naked while you’re fully clothed.”

“Ah.” Harry’s face heated immediately. He hadn’t thought of that, though there was nothing to show, the soft skin just beneath Draco’s navel seamlessly transitioning to that of a sea creature. “Of course.”

He fished in his wardrobe and tossed him a worn black jumper. Draco pulled it on slowly so he wouldn’t hurt himself, messing his hair as he did so. Harry thought he looked rather ridiculous like that, even more so than before—the semblance of normalcy made his tail all the more startling. Plus, though he did have much more developed musculature than before thanks to years of constant swimming, he was still a few sizes smaller than Harry—he looked as though he was drowning in cloth.

A lock of hair fell into Draco’s face and he tried to blow it out. Though he could sit up, the bruises on his torso made it difficult for him to reach above his head, and Harry could tell he wasn’t used to wearing his long hair down around his face as he tried fruitlessly to maneuver himself into a comfortable position to tie it up.

“I can try to help you with that,” Harry offered unthinkingly.

Draco paused. “Why?” he asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow. “Because you feel bad?”

“No,” Harry replied. “Because I want to help.” He didn’t admit it was also because Draco’s hair, after it’d been cleaned and brushed, was soft as silk.

Draco hummed uncertainly but didn’t say no, so Harry took that as his consent. Draco shifted slowly so that Harry would be able to reach his hair, dragging his tail awkwardly. Now that he wasn’t in such immediate peril, Harry marveled at the thick grey skin and the elegantly shaped flippers, how they appeared both strong and delicate at once.

“What is it?” Draco asked, his back stiff with tension again. He couldn’t see that Harry had been gazing wondrously at the changes he’d undergone, for which Harry was silently grateful.

“I’m just wondering how you’d like me to do this,” Harry lied, though it was a good question.

Draco shrugged. “Usually my sisters do this for me, so I don’t pay much attention. Though when I do it I tend to just do one large one, or separate my hair into three different braids, and then knot them around each other so they stay off my back. I’ll be lying down, so that last one may be uncomfortable, and besides that’s probably too much for you.”

Harry shrugged. “I’ve done Rose’s hair plenty of times. After that, yours shouldn’t be a problem.” He began to separate Draco’s hair into numerous different sections, marveling at the smooth feel of the glossy strands beneath his fingers.

“Who is Rose?” Draco asked tentatively, after a hesitation. Harry was surprised he didn’t add something derogatory about Potterlings in, for which he was pleasantly surprised—though, Draco’s appearance had changed so much, it was only fitting that his personality would have evolved as well.

“Ron and Hermione’s daughter,” Harry said. “She’s adorable.”

Draco made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and was silent for many minutes afterwards, breathing deeply as Harry ran his fingers through his hair and attempted to re-create the braids he’d found there before.

“Who are your sisters?” Harry asked eventually. He knew Draco had been an only child at Hogwarts, and that with his mum on house arrest and his dad in prison, his parents probably had not given him any siblings.

“The other sirens,” Draco said, declining to elaborate further.

“You’re the only man?” Harry pressed. Draco shifted his shoulders uncomfortably.

“Yes,” he said in a tone that told Harry he didn’t want to talk about it.

Harry changed the subject instead, knowing pursuing that particular topic any further would be about as productive as sprinting into a brick wall. “Do you want any of the shells or pearls that were there before put back in?” he asked, twisting some of the locks around his fingers so they wouldn’t get tangled. Like he said, he’d had plenty of practice working with Rose’s unruly curls, though a much different texture and density than Draco’s.

Draco blinked, swallowed, and smirked over his shoulder. “Would you be able to put them back in?”

“Probably not,” Harry admitted.

“It’s alright,” Draco said. “I’ll weave them back in myself.” Just slightly, he leaned back into Harry’s touch, nearly imperceptibly. “But you can continue.” He said it as though he was granting Harry a favor. He was, really, but Draco didn’t need to know that.

As Harry braided, he began to feel more and more exhausted. Soon he couldn’t contain his yawns from splitting his face—despite the coffee he’d brewed himself, his lack of sleep was really getting to him.

After Harry pulled too hard for the third time in a row, Draco stopped him. “I think you might want to rest a bit,” he suggested.

“I’m fine,” Harry protested. “Nothing another cup of coffee won’t fix.”

Draco shrugged. “It’s not like there’s much to do, unless there’s something pressing I’ve missed.”

“Well…” Harry began, thinking of the investigation that he’d came here for and abruptly dropping his hands. What was he doing braiding Draco’s hair when he had to get back to sneakily Auroring while on vacation?

“After all, you’ve already found the culprit to that terrible murder you’re here for.”

“Er—“ Harry asked, choking on an inhale.

Draco began shaking with laughter. “I’m picturing your face! Is your mouth open? I bet it is. Oh, I bet you have that indignant look you used to get all the time, those were so funny.”

“How did you know who I’m looking for?”

Draco shrugged, forgetting his injuries, and then winced. “Hippolyte—my sister—got a glimpse of your people a few days ago. She even tried to lure one in the other day, but he snapped out of it once the water reached his knees and ran away. I’m surprised he didn’t say anything—but then, it must have seemed like a dream to him. From what I gather, it usually does, if they escape.”

“Ah.” Harry swallowed heaily. “So you…or your sisters killed Dolohov?”

Draco scowled. “If I answer directly, will you use it against me?”

“Well…” Harry scoured his memories. He’d had to work closely with the Creature Division before when they dealt with a case involving an angry Veela, and they’d told him a lot about creature’s rights that he hadn’t been aware of before. “Is that how they hunt?” Harry turned abruptly to Draco, an alarming thought striking him. “Do you eat _people_?” he asked, no small amount of horror and disgust coloring his voice. It would explain the pointy teeth, after all.

Draco made an offended noise. “ _I_ don’t,” he said, looking rather hurt. “I was one once, that’s horrid. I eat fish, mostly. Crab, sometimes, if I’m feeling fancy.” He glowered into the corner of the room.

“Ah. I didn’t know. It’s not every day you know someone who’s turned into a magical creature.” Draco took Harry’s halfhearted apology-turned-explanation and looked a little mollified, though his stiff posture and tail curled into himself still indicated he felt injured. “So one of your sisters killed them?”

“You wouldn’t have found them if they had,” Draco muttered moodily. “ _They_ eat them.”

“Ah.” Harry had to process that.

Besides the whole man-eating siren thing, Harry supposed Draco’s transformation made sense. Draco must have become a siren because he was afraid of being vulnerable to the attacks of the Death Eaters still at large. A different route than the one Harry had chosen, to be sure. But why he thought that he wouldn’t be eaten himself was one question.

Usually siren song worked off desire magic, a fact that made Harry shoot yet another quizzical look at Draco that he couldn’t see. How would he have managed to lure Dolohov into the sea without desire there?

“But doesn’t a siren song only work…” Harry began, drifting off when he found himself unable to come up with a way to finish his question that didn’t sound unbearably awkward.

“Yes,” Draco replied, scowling. “I don’t sing much to drown. Only if I know the victim, and only then if they have something personal against me or my family. My sisters help me, sometimes. Sometimes they didn’t need to. This time, they did.” He rubbed his arms. “My mother is still on house arrest. She has a house elf, but I have to protect her when I can.”

 _You could have stayed and protected her better,_ Harry thought, but asked instead, “How did you know they wouldn’t kill you?”

“Siren song is beautiful,” Draco said, smoothing out a part of his tail, fingers moving deftly over the thick grey skin, “but only entrances the victim into prey when he or she is attracted to the singer. Otherwise, if they like you, they let you make bargains. Or maybe they’ll eat you anyway. It’s a risk.”

“How did you know you’d be alright?”

“Most sirens are female and therefore not my type,” Draco said with a pointed look, one that said _even you should understand this_. “And at that point, I considered it no great loss if they ate me despite that.”

“Ah.”

Harry hated to admit it, but he did find Draco quite attractive. Good thing he only drowned his victims. And good thing they were out of water. The thought of being drowned by _Malfoy_ of all people was not a pleasant one, no matter how attractive he was.

 “Are you going to put me in booking?” Draco asked him wryly, after a pause. His voice was nonchalant, but husband posture still held anxious tension. “Toss me in a cell in the Ministry?”

Harry shook his head. “Creatures have special rights.”

Draco scoffed dryly, trying not to show his relief. “Good to know.”

Harry laid back, his mind spinning. It did make quite a lot of sense, but he was having a lot of trouble processing the information that he knew was logical.

“I think you should go to sleep,” Draco said softly.

Harry hummed. “Alright,” he conceded, moving to get up. He paused when he felt a hand on his arm.

“How many beds are here?” Draco asked him.

“The one for Teddy, and then the one in here,” Harry replied. “I’ll sleep on the couch again, it’s fine.”

“You got no sleep on the couch last night,” Draco said. “This bed is big enough to fit both of us.”

“No, you’re injured. It’s fine, I’m not going to take a bed from someone who’s infirmed.”

Draco snarled. “I’m not helpless,” he argued.

“No, but you’re not fully well,” Harry retorted. “If you were, you could stretch your arms above your head and pick yourself up without wheezing.”

Draco glowered mutinously at him. “Stay,” he argued, his voice softer. When Harry hesitated, he reluctantly added, “please.”

“Why?”

Draco shifted his shoulders and plucked at the fabric of his jumper. “You’re the first person I’ve met from my past life,” he said. “And the first man I’ve spoken to since then.” He turned his face to him, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed. Despite his words, which were more vulnerable than Harry had ever heard from him, he looked tense and ready to fight.

Eventually, Harry conceded. “Alright.”

He lay back, over the covers, and turned his back to Draco, placing his glasses on the bedside table. There was only so much he could grant him.

As Harry drifted off, he heard something soft, something that may have been a deep breath, and may have been a _thank you_. 

 

_*_

 

Harry was having a nightmare again.

It was the one he had a lot. Where Hermione was being tortured, and he couldn’t get t her fast enough—and then she morphed into Fred, and then Fred turned into Ron, who turned into Ginny, who turned into Teddy, and then everything just kept spiraling and he had lost, lost everything, everyone was gone…

But then, he heard something. Something different than usual.

It started as a note. A beautiful, melodious note that cut through the screams and the sobs, turning into a rhythm, turning into a song. Harry couldn’t understand the words, but the sound of it was so beautiful, so moving. He knew that anything to make a sound so pure couldn’t hurt him. He knew anything so wonderful had to be good, had to protect him.

He was buoyed from sleep gently, like floating out of water. The breathtaking, soothing voice carried him the whole way. He never wanted the sound to stop. He could lose himself in it happily, lost in contentment and affection, deaf to all the pain and suffering, anxiety and hurt that had plagued him for so long.

After so long chasing something he didn’t know he wanted, the song finally showed him something to want.

And maybe he’d get it. But maybe, just maybe, he never would.

Which was better? Which was worse?

Which would leave him even more lost and confused than the other?

He felt a gentle hand on his cheek, soft fingers brushing his sweat-dampened hair from his eyes. 

The song slowly drifted away.

Harry’s heart wrenched when he heard silence fill the void where music used to be.

Feeling bereft, he opened his eyes. A blurry, pale form moved worriedly above him, tentative fingers moving away from his face and rubbing his shoulder instead.

“It’s alright." His voice still carrying hints of that beautiful melody. “It was just a dream.”

There was a pause, in which Harry squinted into the darkness and the figure above him, who was becoming clearer now that the haze of the song was retreating, seemed to hesitate.

 “I’m sorry,” Draco said quietly. “You were having a nightmare.” The siren knew what they were like. He just hadn’t had them as often since he joined his sisters. The siren song wasn’t deadly—at least not without intention. Sometimes, it was only soothing, if that was what the siren wanted.

In this, he wasn’t trying to hurt Harry, to lure him anywhere or promise him anything. He was trying to give him that effortless calm that had been so elusive in the dark days of and following the war, the harrowing weeks and months where everything caught up to him and he finally began to process what his traumatized mind had filed away for later in lieu of immediate survival. Their experiences had been vastly different, but Draco knew their situations were two sides of the same coin —both chosen, both reluctant, and ultimately, both doomed. Whereas Draco had found a corrupted salvation in the freedom of his most recent incarnation, Harry still fought, just as he had before.

He didn’t know that Harry was searching for something more than this.

“I know,” Harry said on a breath. He felt the last few cold beads of sweat trickle into his hair as his gasps slowed to a more regular pattern. His heart calmed in his chest, from the thundering pace to the placid, steady beating.

Draco was about to turn away, but then he heard it.

“Don’t stop.”

As Draco sang softly, he felt a palm press against his own, felt fingers thread through his. He felt a gentle squeeze and a solid warmth.

In a held hand, Draco felt Harry’s thanks.

 

_*_

 

The sun was rising on the second day, and Draco’s looming absence became an increasingly anxiety-provoking thought as the shadows dispersed.

Harry knew what he wanted now, and it wasn’t for Draco to go. After that, like usual nowadays, he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure how far he wanted this to go, how far he could pursue something. Someone. Especially someone like Draco.

He looked down at their intertwined fingers. He’d been up for a while now—and Draco was still asleep. He didn’t want to extricate himself and risk Draco waking up, or at least, that’s what he told himself. He liked watching Draco sleep, he realized, the siren’s face peaceful in a way that it never was in wakefulness. Draco could put on a blank façade all he wanted, but it would never look anything like the relaxed expression he sported in slumber. Harry hadn’t thought it was possible for him, until he saw it himself.

The siren song rang in his ears. Such a beautiful, haunting melody. High notes like wave crests, low ones as profound as the depths of the sea. And they’d shown him so much that he hadn’t known—both about himself, and about Draco.

He hadn’t known Draco felt so _much_ until he listened to him—the pain and grief in his voice, the sadness pooling like a well between the notes. The soft, steady comfort of his presence, like the ocean, vast and unknowable, the waves breaking regularly and the sound drifting through the open window, carried in on the breeze.

It all made Harry wonder what Draco would be like if he was happy.

Sure, he’d seen him at Hogwarts, with Crabbe and Goyle or Pansy and Blaise. He had looked happy, or at least smug, while with them plenty of times. Certainly while he was being a brat. But that skinny little fifteen-year-old wasn’t Draco anymore. And not just because of his physical changes.

Harry wasn’t sure what happiness would look like on this incarnation of Draco, but he wanted to see it. If only to show himself that if Draco could find happiness possible, then certainly Harry, who had all the best plans and all the wonderful people around him—surely he could be happy too.

Of course he could.

But before he thought about himself, he needed to think about Draco.

Because if he thought about himself, he might start wondering why he wanted this. And for the first time in a long time, he’d finally woke up with a feeling of purpose, a reason to wake up that wasn’t his usual monotony.

He couldn’t ruin this.

 

_*_

 

After finally disentangling himself, Harry brought Draco tea while he was still asleep and set it under a warming charm on the bedside table. He would have been surprised about it since, for some reason, he’d always thought Draco would be a light sleeper (probably his general air of prissiness and disgruntled complaints). Instead, he slept soundly, though this may have been due to the painkilling potion he was on.

As Draco slept, having woken up early with nothing better to do, Harry made himself, Teddy, and (after some consideration) Draco all breakfast. He wasn’t sure what Draco ate anymore—and he figured, since the siren hadn’t complained all through the night, that he needed to eat less than the average person—so he cooked him some eggs, toast and sausage with the rest of them.

Teddy wasn’t in his room when Harry walked over to wake him, the smell of breakfast wafting through the small hotel suite. Instead, he had snuck to the room that Harry and Draco had shared, and Harry heard his high, excited voice carry from behind the door left slightly ajar.

“Do you ever get bored in the ocean?” he heard Teddy ask.

“Sometimes,” he heard Draco reply, his voice gravelly and thick with sleep. “It’s alright, though. There are plenty of things to explore. And I’ve been working on holding my breath for even longer.”

“I should work on that,” Teddy said thoughtfully.

“No,” Draco replied swiftly, sounding much more alert. “You’re fine, Teddy. Don’t go swimming alone again.”

“But you’ll be there.”

Harry heard the blankets rustle. “Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes not.”

“Where else would you be?”

Harry peered through the open door in time to see Draco shrug. “Elsewhere.”

“But what if I want you to visit me?” Harry didn’t have to look at his face to know he was pouting, even with his back turned.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said, surprisingly gentle. “The ocean is fickle.”

Teddy made a discontented noise in the back of his throat, unconvinced, but let the subject drop.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Teddy said with a dash of solemnity Harry didn’t think him capable of.

Draco smiled, his lips twisting, the movement ragged from him solely and painfully. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Why don’t you go and eat your breakfast, I can smell it from here.”

Teddy nodded, moving to get up off the bed. At the edge of it, he paused. “You will visit, though,” he said to Draco, more an order than a question.

Draco nodded. “I’ll try.”

Teddy nodded very seriously and made his way out of the door, saying a small good morning to Harry before heading to his food.

“Teddy is going to miss you,” Harry said as he walked towards Draco, watching the little boy scamper to the table and shutting the door behind him as he entered, plate in hand.

“He’s a good kid,” Draco said, reaching a hand out to breakfast with interest. “Breakfast in bed? How thoughtful, Potter.”

Harry hummed noncommittally, handing the plate over. For a while, he sat in silence, lost in thought and staring out the window as Draco tucked in. And then, Harry said, “You could stay, you know.”

Draco scoffed around a mouthful of eggs, swallowing heavily. “Stay? Where? In London?” He gestured to his tail, a look of deep and amused incredulousness carved onto his face.

“Here,” Harry said. “With Teddy. With me.”

Draco snorted inelegantly. “Where would you live? On a rock in the ocean?”

Harry’s eyes drifted to the lighthouse, standing proudly on the hill over the beach, too far away now to see how dilapidated it really was. “I have an idea.”

“You can’t live near here,” Draco said while gesticulating with his fork, oblivious to Harry’s pointed stare. “You’re an Auror, Golden Boy. Go back to work.”

“What makes you think I couldn’t live in London and buy a place here?”

“Oh, I’m sure you could,” Draco said, rolling his eyes and feeling net to him to set his half-empty plate off to the side. He could feel the conversation turn more serious—the air had that same sort of electricity it got in it right before a storm. The same feeling he used to get before the two of them fought in school. “But you won’t.”

“I want to.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Harry said simply, “I want to be near you.”

Draco scoffed. “One song has you stupid. I never should have sang it. I’m not your charity case, Potter.”

“It wasn’t the song,” Harry argued. “And you’re not—“ But Draco was undeterred.

“You don’t want me,” he said. “Not really. You don’t even know me. You only want someone to save.”

“That’s not true,” Harry protested. I want you to stay with me, Draco. I want to help you. You don’t belong where you are.”

“What makes you think I want the help you’re offering?” Draco retorted sharply, his body language becoming increasingly confrontational with squared shoulders and a squared jaw.

“You have to come back,” Harry said, purposefully lowering and smoothing out his voice, trying to make it gentler than it had been.”You don’t belong at the bottom of the ocean—you were a human first and foremost, Draco. This is where your family is. Where your roots are.”

“What family?” Draco spat. “A father who betrayed me, a mother who’s imprisoned? A society that hates me? There’s nothing for me there, Harry.”

“You can _make_ it something.”

Draco took numerous deep breaths with closed eyes. Eventually, seeming much calmer, he asked, “Why are you so sure there would be a place for me?”

Harry opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, at a loss. “Because, it’s…where you lived,” he answered, rather lamely.

“But not where I belong,” Draco said, smiling bitterly. “Society is for the good people, Harry.” His right hand twitched to his scarred, left forearm, but he refrained from touching the marred Mark. But Harry noticed.

An ache in his chest for reasons he couldn’t explain, Harry reached out to touch his shoulder. Upon doing so, Draco took his hand gently and placed it on the bed beside them instead.

“Tell me I’m a good person,” Draco said quietly, but emotion made the last of his sentence break. “You’re the best person I know, Scarhead. Everyone says so. Tell me I’m a good person. Tell me what it means to be good.”

“I…”

“You don’t know what it is, do you? What it is that makes someone good or bad.”

“It’s our decisions,” Harry said, remembering something Dumbledore had told him once.

“I killed a man over on that beach, right over there, fifty metres away,” Draco said bluntly, obviously trying to get a reaction out of Harry. “That was my decision.”

“He was a bad man,” Harry argued.

“Was he?” Draco cocked his head.

“He killed people. He was a Death Eater, and he—”

“I killed someone, now. And I was a Death Eater. Am I a bad person, then, Harry?”

“ _No_ ,” Harry replied, all the more vehement for his mounting frustration. “You were a dumb teenager who was following his parents. You didn’t know any better.”

“I believed in it,” he murmured. “At first. And you were a dumb teenager too. Following Dumbledore.”

“Voldemort would have killed me if I didn’t.”

“He would have killed me, too, if I hadn’t followed him.”

Harry took a deep breath.

“You changed your beliefs. People can change for the better.”

“But am I good, Harry? If that’s what it means to be good—to just not be the worst incarnation of yourself—then what the fuck? Why even try?” Draco ground his teeth, made all the more fearsome for the small points of them. “I have to know that something like what happened won’t happen again.”

“Another war?”

“Another me. How I was, in the war. I was the worst possible version of myself in the war. And if I go back, I don’t know that that won’t be me again.” He pursed his lips. “I’m not sure I’m not that now.”

“War makes people desperate.”

“It just makes people show their true colors. Evidently, mine were fairly ugly,” Draco sneered, his face twisted and ugly to match the emotions which welled up within him.

Harry couldn’t figure out what Draco was saying. He’d thought, at first, that Draco had used his transformation as a method to gain the upper hand on the Death Eaters still at large. But clearly he had assumed incorrectly. “So you’re just…going to stay here, because—because you don’t think you’re good enough to come back?”

“I know I’m not,” Draco said. The lack of self-pity in his voice is what truly rattled Harry—he wasn’t saying it because he felt sorry for himself, but because he truly believed it, which Harry felt was much worse.

“That’s a stupid way to think,” Harry told him, purposefully wanting to get a rise out of him, wanting to get anything but that resolute blankness, that resigned passivity.

Draco’s lips twisted in an approximation of a sick smile. “Maybe,” he replied. “But it’s stupid to want something you can’t have.”

“Is it?” Harry asked, brow furrowed. “Or isn’t the point of it to work towards someday when you might get it?”

“Life doesn’t work like that.”

“I never thought I’d be free of Voldemort _and_ alive. But here I am. Wanting something and working for it—that’s what life is about.”

“Some things just aren’t meant to be.” Draco sighed. “I shouldn’t have sang,” he muttered, more to himself than Harry.

Harry ignored it, instead veering the conversation back to the point he most wanted to argue. “You’re not _meant_ to be good or bad, Draco. You just choose.”

Draco scoffed. “It’s easy for you, scarhead. You’re so sickeningly _good_ , you Golden Boy. Every choice you make is the right one.”

“I’ve made mistakes,” Harry said, thinking of Sirius, thinking of the scars on Draco’s chest.

“You’ve made a few. My whole life is one big mistake.”

“That doesn’t mean you should run away from it. If anything, it just makes it something to work for.”

Draco grinned a wolfish smile full of daggers. “But if I don’t run, what will you have to chase? Then you’ll have nothing to work for. You always were too obsessed with me.”

Harry blinked slowly. “Only in sixth year,” he admitted eventually, to Draco’s sharp laughter.

They got quiet again. The only sounds were the crashing of the nearby waves and the throaty calls of the gulls overhead. The wind brushed over the dunes, picking up grains of sand softly and spreading them over the beach.

The sky was grey and stormy, rainclouds swirling high overhead in an intricate pattern Harry couldn’t discern. The color reflected down onto the murky waters, deep and muddled with sea foam and seaweed. It reminded him of what Draco’s eyes used to look like.

“Bring me to the ocean, Harry,” Draco said quietly, his face turned to the sea through the open window. “I need to go back to where I belong.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Harry said forlornly in a matching volume, finally stripping away all the altruistic excuses and meaningful coaxing, finally letting the core of his drive in this matter show through.

“I know,” Draco said sadly. “It’s the song.”

“It’s not.” Harry knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. He wanted this, finally, he knew something that deserved his passion and his energy, something that wasn’t work sucking his life away. This was something to strive for.

It had to be real.

“I know,” Draco conceded, in a reassuring tone that told Harry exactly what Draco thought he knew. “But I still have to leave.”

“I’ll wait for you to come back.”

Draco’s brow furrowed, his lips momentarily a thin white line. “You won’t.”

Harry had a glint in his eye, the kind he only got when presented a challenge. “I will.”

“Well, _I_ won’t.”

“Then I’ll do it anyway.”

Draco sighed.

The crashing waves breathed out and in with him.

“Bring me to the ocean, Harry,” he repeated.

And this time, Harry did.

 

_*_

 

The day after Draco left, Harry looked out to sea after him until the sun hung low on the horizon and Teddy was tugging on is shirt to make dinner.

The day after that, he went to talk to a man about a lighthouse.

 

_*_

 

Over the course of the next few weeks, between taking care of Teddy and working long hours at the DMLE on other cases, Harry would spend his time at the lighthouse, fixing it up. He hired a crew to give it a new paint job, new staircases. They replaced the battered and broken searchlight at the top of it, and a whole slew of hired hands helped decorate the inside of it, alongside Ginny and Hermione’s help. Harry intended the lighthouse to act as a sort of beach home for all of them, if only so none of them would realize the real reason he’d bought it.

He’d told no one about Draco. Only Luna and Teddy knew. And though Teddy would probably talk, he didn’t know the siren’s name. And Luna, for all her oddity, knew how to keep secrets close to her.

“Did he sing to you?” she asked him once, while they sat together for lunch, hunched over mugs of tea in the cold autumn air.

“Yes,” Harry replied. “But that’s not why I’m there.”

Luna hummed knowingly. “Harry,” she said, patting his hand reassuringly. “The song can’t hypnotize people once it’s stopped. But the memory of it can present a draw to those searching for something more than their life provides them. Are you searching for something, Harry?”

“He wasn’t trying to—to seduce me, or anything. He was just trying to wake me up from a nightmare.”

“Does it matter what we try to do if we end up doing something else entirely?” she wondered.

“That’s not what happened,” Harry argued.

Luna just gave him that same little knowing smile. “Sure, Harry.”

 

_*_

 

During one of his many trips, some with Teddy and some without, Harry caught sight of Draco sunning himself on a rock at midday and called out to him. Draco’s head snapped to the side, following the sound of his voice.

The next instant, he was gone, slid away by the water.

Harry tried not to think about the ache of rejection in his chest. It wasn’t just him that made Draco want to hide, Harry knew. In fact, it probably had very little to do with him, and everything to do with Draco himself.

Still, that didn’t prevent it from hurting.

 

_*_

 

“Why are you still here?” Draco asked exasperatedly, his arms propping him up in the sand, his tail weaving haphazard spirals in front of him.

Months had passed. Harry came back less frequently now, but every so often, at least once a week or so, he returned.  As he had now.

The feeling of immediate and consuming necessity had left him long ago. But there was still that want, steady like a heartbeat, which drove him to Draco. What it was from him that Harry wanted, he couldn’t be certain. A companion could hardly be the answer—they barely knew each other. A project was, unfortunately, a more likely candidate, something that made Harry cringe every time he thought it. Hermione always said he had a saving people thing. If only it hadn’t been such a difficult, chaotic person. But of course, it had to be. If he could save anyone, it would have to be someone as stubborn and belligerent as Draco Malfoy.

Perhaps he just wanted to hear that song again, just once more. To hear the soothing sounds and be lulled into a sense of security, false as it was. To feel, for once, as though he was protected. Not that he necessarily needed it, Harry was never helpless, but just…taken care of. The fact that he could do what he needed for himself, but that someone had chosen to do this anyway, to stay there and sing that and wait to make sure he was alright, made it all the more comforting.

So few people ever checked to make sure he was alright. So few cared to listen when the answer wasn’t what they wanted.

Maybe that was what he wanted. But, he realized, he had been going about it all wrong. All pigheaded stubbornness and brash proclamations, trying to convince him that shades of grey were actually black and white—none of it would ever work on someone like Draco.

“I’m tired,” the siren said, the softness of his voice nearly eaten by the sound of a breaking waves. It was just loud enough to derail Harry’s train of thought.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. He knew he was apologizing because _he_ had put that resigned tone in his voice, and he had put those bags underneath Draco’s eyes, even if he hadn’t meant to.

“Why?” Draco asked bitterly. “Because you are, or because you want to feel better about yourself? Because even if I don’t accept it, at least you tried, hmm? That makes you better, doesn’t it.”

Harry hesitated. “Doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know!” Draco said with bite, jarringly explosive after how quiet he had been. “I don’t _know_ what being good is, Potter! I just fuck everything up—that’s why I can’t go back!”

“You don’t have to go back,” Harry told him.

“You held different sentiments before.”

Harry licked his lips. “I thought I knew what I wanted before.”

“And now?” Draco raised one fine eyebrow.

“Now, all I know is that I’m here and I’m staying, and that I’ll help you—if you let me.”

Draco scoffed. “Stop being kind,” he spat. “I don’t understand why you’re here if not for the song. You must be addled.”

Harry shrugged, making a face. He may have been, but at that moment, he didn’t very much care. “Maybe.”

Draco sighed and flopped, belly-up, onto the wet surf.

Together, they sat in silence until the sun sank low on the horizon, and Draco urged Harry to leave.

“They’ll begin to sing,” he warned him.

“Maybe I want to hear it,” Harry said, but Draco was already shaking his head.

“Not this kind,” he replied, and then a wave took him back to the ocean, where he belonged.

As the undertow carried him away and Draco sank, he watched the bubbles rise above him, distorting the reddened sunlight. 

_This is where I belong._

_…Right?_

 

_*_

 

Finally, one day, Harry found the siren waiting for him on the beach beneath the lighthouse. His appearance as seeker instead of the sought was a surprising one for Harry, who had gotten used to walking the barren, grey-scale beach alone.

“You don’t want me,” Draco told him, assured as if he’d read his thoughts. His face was as calm as the ocean was that day, hiding the turmoil beneath. “You don’t know me.”

“Maybe I want to know you.”

Draco’s mouth twitched. “Don’t try to be clever,” he said, trying for a sneer and ending in a lopsided half-smile. “It must be much too taxing for you. If you faint, just know I won’t be able to catch you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Harry said, returning a smile of his own.

 

_*_

 

It was late at night, the water dark as ink, the moon high in the sky.

Harry had screamed himself awake as the tendrils of fear from his nightmare receded. He walked across the beach, the same one that Dolohov died on as he searched a different sort of sanctuary, the same one others had died on to create the muggle myth of the sirens which inhabited the grey ocean.

There had been suffering, here. It wasn’t gone yet. It lingered in a lonely breath and whistled on the restless wind.

But it was made less powerful, in that moment, by the wondrous song which flowed over the crests of the waves. Sadness resided within it, yes. But it made the sound, strong and hopeful and understanding, so much more meaningful for it.

Unlike those before him, Harry didn’t follow the song into the waters. He didn’t wade to his death and embrace it with entranced eyes wide and searching.

Instead, he sat on the beach, his jumper pulled tight around him and his legs pulled into his chest.

He stared out to the longing sea, to where the creature who was too twisted up in what used to be to see what could be, one day, hid himself away.  Hiding from himself, perhaps, more than anyone. Hiding from the good he could be, a variable and shifting thing it was, if only he wasn’t so scared of it.

Harry didn’t try to chase it.

Instead, he waited.

 

_*_

 

There are stories about the sirens, still. They say they lure people in with their beautiful song, promising them their deepest desires. They drag them to the depths of the ocean, and they never return.

Not many people are seen at this beach. Not many people go, staved off by the chilled air and the whistling wind that carries strange melodies on it in bursts and gusts. It’s a cold place, grey and damp.

But one man can still be seen there often. Someone trying to figure out who he wants, someone trying to figure out what he loves.

He’s walked the beach many times. Sometimes he wanders alone, through sunlight and darkness.

But sometimes, people say they’ve seen someone with him. A creature, maybe human, but maybe not. A creature that doesn’t know what he wants, or who he loves. A creature who’s trying to.

They’re both trying to.

And maybe they’ll find it.

But maybe they won’t.

The ocean waves reach up along the surf, bringing the smell of sea salt and brine. The clouds gather along the horizon.

Which is better?

Which is worse?

Two figures, silhouetted by the setting sun.

They stay together until darkness falls, watching the waves roll in and out.

The seagulls caw. The wind whistles.

And if one listens hard enough, they can hear a quiet, beautiful song dance along the darkened sea, coaxing them in.


End file.
